“The paperback is very interesting but I find it will never replace the hardcover book – it makes a very poor doorstop.”

I’m full of fears and I do my best to avoid difficulties and any kind of complications. I like everything around me to be clear as crystal and completely calm.

Mystery is an intellectual process. But suspense is essentially an emotional process.

When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, ‘It’s in the script.’ If he says, ‘But what’s my motivation?, ‘ I say, ‘Your salary.’

Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.

It seems to me that television is exactly like a gun. Your enjoyment of it is determined by which end of it you’re on.

Actually, I have no regard for money. Aside from its purchasing power, it’s completely useless as far as I’m concerned.

To me Psycho was a big comedy. Had to be.

Blondes make the best victims. They’re like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.

I’m not much into rear window ethics.

Man does not live by murder alone. He needs affection, approval, encouragement and, occasionally, a hearty meal.

Revenge is sweet and not fattening.

People don’t always express their inner thoughts to one another; a conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person really thinks or feels.

I would almost say that the best screen actor is the man who can do nothing extremely well.

I’m a writer and, therefore, automatically a suspicious character.

Drama is real life with all the boring parts cut out.

Disney has the best casting. If he doesn’t like an actor he just tears him up.

I’ve never read one book about my father.

That’s part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence.

The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.

Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private revelation.

Reading one book a day to your child can change the trajectory of their future.

People come, people go – they’ll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in a favorite book.

I was an imaginative child and learning to read was like unlocking another dimension in my mind.

The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers.